Power plants and other large industrial systems utilize very large water intake cribs or screen houses which serve as a source of water for cooling systems and the like. While these structures may have a concrete floor, silt tends to collect in the corners. In some instances, clams, for example those of the variety Corbicula, flourish in the silt, having a rich supply of fresh and usually moving water which brings them food.
Unfortunately, when the clams die, their shells and even living clams have been found to be sucked into the cooling water pumps, often plugging the condenser tubes. This eventually results in a required shutdown of the facility for maintenance and removal of the clam shells from the condenser tubes.
While the problem could be solved by draining the screen house of water and removing the silt, this can be a very expensive and inconvenient technique. Furthermore, it is difficult to ultilize conventional poisons for the clams to prevent their growing to a size where the clam shells can plug the condenser tubes, since most poisons are both expensive and environmentally unsafe. A typical screen house may contain hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, so very large amounts of poison material must be placed into the water, generating undesirable environmental consequences and at great expense.
By this invention, an environmentally safe technique, utilizing inexpensive ingredients, is provided for eliminating mussels and other bottom dwelling creatures from an underwater bed, for example an underwater bed of an enclosed water intake crib or screen house for a power plant or the like.